Here Are the Top Fundraising Cities for 8 Nonprofit Cause Types

The second largest grant maker in the United States, Fidelity Charitable, just released their 2017 Geography of Giving as part of their overall Fidelity Charitable Giving Report.

Please review the entire report and the Geography of Giving section for a wealth of knowledge in giving trends.

In this post, we will focus in on the insights regarding the top metropolitan areas as it applies toward giving to eight areas of charitable giving.

Let’s explore each of the eight areas of charitable giving and which cities rank the highest:

Arts & Culture: San Francisco ranks first nationally in support of arts and culture organizations, such as public broadcasting.

Education: The Bridgeport metro area in Connecticut ranks in the top three for number of residents who hold at least a four-year degree, so it’s no surprise that it repeated as the number one area for supporting this sector.

Environment and Animal Welfare: San Francisco’s donors provide more support to the environment and to animal welfare causes than any other region. It is the first city in the country to have a park or open space within a 10-minute walk of every resident.

Health: Home to world-renowned hospitals, Boston donors make their region number one in the United States for support of the health sector, both locally and in other regions of the country.

Human Services: Donors in the Bridgeport metro area, Connecticut, which includes Greenwich and Westport, have used their Giving Accounts to support nonprofits that provide human services, making the region first in support of this area, jumping four spots from the year before.

International Affairs: New York donors often think beyond our nation’s borders when recommending grants, beating out last year’s top city, Washington, DC. New York City now holds the top rank for donor support to international affairs nonprofits, which reflects the global orientation of many of its residents.

Religion: Indianapolis unseats Salt Lake City in this year’s ranking for supporting religion, by climbing two spots.

Society Benefit: Florida made its presence known on this year’s lists. Miami retains its top rank for society benefit, while another Florida city, Naples, comes in second for human services.

The eight sectors above are subsets of overall charitable giving that provide insight into how varied the nonprofit sector is. I personally would like to commend the folks at Fidelity for sharing such a wealth of data.

Since donor advised funds are the fastest growing segment of charitable giving seeing such insights perhaps provides an accurate glimpse into the future for all of us involved in professional fundraising.

I was excited to also read in the report that Fidelity has enough years worth of data to state that 75% of the funds deposited into their donor advised fund accounts are granted to charities within the first ten years!

This might offset partially the huge amount of concern about dollars being parked in such donor advised funds without being out to use. Perhaps it reflects the additional due diligence being performed by the owners of those accounts, unlike previous generations of donors who gave to charitable causes without requiring more detailed information regarding results.

Thankfully, there are tools like Bloomerang’s new Sustainability Scorecard that make it easy to share the desired information with such donors!

Please join me in congratulating Fidelity for sharing this information in such an illustrative manner.

Jay Love

A 30+ veteran of the nonprofit software industry, Jay Love co-founded Bloomerang in 2012. He currently serves on the board of the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University and is the past AFP Ethics Committee Chairman.